


I'll Find You

by Ccaprico



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 22:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11746488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ccaprico/pseuds/Ccaprico
Summary: Black was at a loss. The other paladins had stopped looking for her paladin after they found the imposter. And if they weren’t going to do anything about it, then she would.





	I'll Find You

When Black sent her paladin across the universe, to the safest place she could find in the depths of his mind, she wasn’t expecting it to take so long for him to return. True, she didn’t understand how the world of the paladins worked, but she knew it wouldn’t take too long for her paladin to come back. In the meantime, she had to make do with the red paladin.

None of them were particularly happy about the change. The red paladin was ill-suited to the role of leader, too quick to jump into action before thinking. He was brash and complained about everything, most of all Black. She had half the mind to kick him out – consequences be damned – but she knew red would never stand for it. Her paladin asked her to choose him as a successor for some reason entirely lost on her. She trusted her paladin’s judgement, and it’s seemed the red paladin was just as keen to find him as she was, but damn, she didn’t enjoy a moment of it.

With the red paladin out of the way, Red all but pounced on the blue paladin. It seemed entirely irrational, with the blue paladin’s watery and happy-go-lucky tendencies, but Blue hadn’t left him much of a choice. It was wise of her to put her barriers up, forcing distance between the two. If she hadn’t, Black knew she would swallow him up and never let go.

Blue chose the princess to carry out her work, much to Black’s chagrin. She seemed much more suited to the role of black paladin than the red one could ever hope to be, but again, she had a deal to keep. Hopefully, the group could find her paladin before anyone got hurt, which seemed like a very real possibility now.

So they searched, and the red paladin charged in as expected, complaining all the way about the speed and the controls and how she wasn’t moving enough. She refused to bond with the boy, not even offering the choice of a jaw-blade in the battle. Her paladin would probably scold her for it if he was here, but he wasn’t. Frankly, he was all she cared about.

And then the imposter showed up. A man who looked and had the same biorhythm as her paladin, but most definitely wasn’t. He stunk of black magic and wrongness in a way her paladin could never smell. He tried to fly her, and although he had the same mindset as her paladin, the same good will, she refused to open up to an imposter. 

Shiro was her one true paladin.

The paladins took it entirely the wrong way, of course. The red paladin now thought he was her rightful paladin, and the group saw the imposter more and more as Shiro with every passing day. It terrified her as much as it surprised her. They stopped looking for her paladin, and started going back to freeing planets, one-by-one. She could feel the red paladin pushing at her bond, trying to force a connection that neither of them wanted. 

It was obvious that they were never going to find her paladin like this. The only who had their suspicions on the imposter was the green paladin and the princess, but neither of them were willing to act. 

So Black would do it in their stead. 

She waited until the time was right, in the lull between them freeing a planet and battling the Galra. All the paladins were tired and ready for a rest, and it was something even the imposter couldn’t force them away from. She could tell in the way his remarks became more snappish, the demands he threw over the comms line, that whatever magic lay dormant within was beginning to take hold. She had to move quickly before the others were in danger. 

When the night simulator finally turned on and her home was filled with the creaks of long-forgotten times, she moved. The hangar doors opened on her command, and she shot through them, into space. Even if the others woke up now and signalled the alarm, she would be too far away for them to track her. Not that it made a difference: she was getting her paladin back, whether they liked it or not.

Even from light years away, she could still feel the tug of their bond pulling at her soul. He was somewhere in the far reaches of the universe, with the saved-friend she saw in his memories. He was safe. She had removed him from danger. Nothing had happened to him.

...What if it she was wrong?

Her paladin deserved the world for what he put up with, and Black might have sent him some place worse than the Galra. No, nothing was worse than her ex-paladin. His corruption was absolute. But she knew about his time as a fighter, how her paladin hurt the one he loved to protect him. If the saved-friend had mistaken it for animosity... No!

With a roar, she surged forward, reaching deep within herself. The world of blank space and bright stars dissolved into a shining light, and when she returned, the tug on her bond was just a little bit stronger. How many times could she manage to transport before she was completely drained? Fifteen? Sixteen? She’d never had to jump such long distances before.

But she’d do it. For Shiro.

She carried on pushing forward until her connection to the other lions was all but lost. Green and Yellow were confused, erratic - unsure of where their leader was. But Red and Blue understood. They wanted their paladins back, to feel whole again after so long. Black just needed to know he was okay, that she had saved him after how much she hurt him.

Black wasn’t stupid. She knew how much he hurt after the first time she rejected him, back when her ex-paladin forced their connection. Some of it had been intentional, to save her paladin from the pain of the arena again, but some of it had been selfish. She wanted to see with her own eyes what had become of him. The connection had ended so abruptly, so suddenly after they went into that strange place, that knowing he was alive made her overjoyed. And then his conscious pushed against hers, and it wasn’t the kind paladin she knew all those years ago, but a creature that had become the puppet of something much darker. Something not from their universe. 

And then they crash-landed, their bond as tattered as her outside, and she needed the red paladin to pilot her. It had been an impulse decision on her behalf; to save her paladin through the red paladin. It worked, of course, but their bond became even more fractured. Laced with feelings to self-doubt and pain, traumatic memories from both of them clouding their judgment. She was in no right-mind to stop her previous paladin from connecting to her, finding their location.

She expected him to give up with her then. To call it quits and head back to his world, one so different from her home but just a beautiful. Why would he want to spend time with such a disloyal machine, one that could even choose between her two paladins? She wanted to accept Shiro, but he couldn’t commit, freezing up when she tried. She wanted to reject Zarkon, but that would mean giving up on the man who had helped her so many times in the past. 

Split between the two paladins, she did the only thing she could do: bring them to her realm.

It was so obvious, then, which one she wanted. Shiro – it would always be Shiro.  _Her_ paladin. Her perfect, traumatised paladin who accepted all her flaws, and she accepted all his. It was completely different from Zarkon, who always saw her as a weapon. And for once, she was  _free_. 

She vowed that would be the last time she ever rejected him, and she planned to stick to that promise until the day she was too battered to live. 

She travelled for days, pushing her thrusters to the edge and using her teleportation whenever an obstacle got in her way. The castle was long gone, but her paladin was still so far away. She was somewhere in the middle, between going home and finding her paladin. And she was already on the edge of breaking down.

Black endured – for her paladin, for herself. She only had one, good jump left until she was out of quintessence, and her fuel was running on fumes, but she endured. She needed to rest, or find a power source before she really did find herself stranded.

Her saviour came in the form of a massive gas planet off in the distance, with huge storms raging on the surface. The scanners picked up a mix of metallic hydrogen and titanium as its core, surrounded by clouds of helium, nitrogen and various other gases. It didn’t matter to her: the sky was her element. As long as there was air, her power could return.

She delved into the gas planet head-first, soaking up the quintessence. Pieces of scrap metal scratched across the hull, tearing away her black paint, but it didn’t matter. She could survive being a bit battered, as long as she could continue. It took time for the quintessence of the planet to soak into Black, especially given how depleted her reserves were. Where Red survived off heat and Blue off the ice, Black’s was much more versatile. Her element was everywhere, which meant she could feast on it almost anywhere, but at a price: she gathered the least amount of quintessence from it. Usually, it wouldn’t bother her, but now...

Finally, her thrusters were full.

Without a second to spare, she surged back out of the gas planet, erupting in a cloud of metal and ice as she went. How many hours did she spend soaking in the gas planet? She didn’t know, but it was too many. He was so close – she could feel their bond pulling them together, searching for one another.

It was too much. She wanted her paladin now! 

Her scanners finally picked up on liveable planets ahead, any one of them having the potential to hold her paladin. One looked like an ice planet, perfect for the short, flabby creatures she identified on the surface, and the next was a sandy desert. Neither had her paladin. 

She went through each planet one-by-one, searching as far as her scanners allowed for her paladin. Until, right on the very end – she found him. On a planet as dark as the astral plane, in a city to the edge of one of their continents.

The atmosphere burned around her as she pushed forward, shooting like a fallen star toward the city. Her paladin was here, somewhere, and she would find him. Her bond shook with the amount of force she put into it, screaming to the other end that she was here for him. Here to bring him home.

And he called back.

A surge of warmth shot through her circuits as her paladin appeared on the top of one of the buildings, still wearing his paladin armour with his saved-friend in tow. Black never thought she’d see the day where she lost her composure. But- it was him – thank god it was him – he was alright – he was okay –  _why didn’t he come back after so long?!_  

She landed on top of the building, waiting for an answer. It came moments later, as her paladin looked sheepishly around for the others. It was just her. She came for him. 

His mind opened to the question, revealing everything. The team would be better with a change of leadership. He was needed here, to organise the rebellion like a good leader would do. The others could survive without him dragging them down. He loved them too much to do something like that.

And it hurt, because she knew how much he loved her, but he didn’t know how much she loved him. After everything that happened, she never showed him. Not until now.

She didn’t waste a second before swallowing him, pushing her mind against his. He should feel everything: how much she missed him, how much she needed him. It had been a nightmare with the red paladin. How, in the moment where she sent him away, it had been the toughest thing she ever had to do. Never again would he doubt his importance to her or the team. Never again would she let him think – even for a moment – that she wasn’t lost without him. 

He responded in tow with promises to never leave again. They were in this together, until the day her ex-paladin was free of his nightmare and her true paladin could finally rest easy. 

After months of trying, she found him. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this in literally an hour between other pieces, so I should probably apologize if it's shit. If there's a load of spelling mistakes just tell me and I'll read through it... hopefully I'll get them all. 
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> [Tumblr ](http://ccaprico.tumblr.com/)


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